Top 20 Best Dark Anime on Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu & Funimation (2023)

Darkness comes in many shapes within a story. Sometimes the darkness is attributed to blood and gore, sometimes it’s psychological horror, and sometimes darkness appears within the nihilistic views of the characters. Anime has a bit of every kind in its vast collection. Here are the top 20 best dark anime on Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu & Funimation.

Top 20 Best Dark Anime on Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu & Funimation

Best Dark Anime on Crunchyroll

5) Akame ga Kill!

The inhuman torture and murder his friends suffered at the hands of a sadistic rich girl rid Tatsumi of his optimism and naivety.

After he meets Akame, an assassin working for the rebels to save the country, he joins her assassin group, the Night Raid.

But the ugliness of the world is yet to present itself as Tatsumi befriends and understands the rest of the assassins at Night Raid.

4) Puella Magi Madoka Magica

With its game-changing plot and shocking darkness, Puella Magi Madoka Magica easily wins the spot as one of the best dark anime of all time.

It starts with Madoka and Sayaka, two friends who are one day attacked by Witches. After Mami Tomoe saves them, they learn about the Magical Girls.

But when they get the chance to be Magical Girl themselves through a mysterious creature called Kyuubey, the truth of the role becomes much darker.

3) Attack on Titan

On that day, when Titans destroyed Wall Maria and massacred Shiganshina, Eren Yeager’s life turned to hell, and he vowed to kill all Titans.

Years later, Eren joins the army along with his friends, Mikasa and Armin, to fulfill his goal of ridding the world of Titans, but there’s more to Titans and himself that he has to find out first. Attack on Titan is a global sensation and one of the best dark anime of all time.

2) Made in Abyss

Nobody knows what the Abyss is or where it came from. All people know is that the Abyss has always been there, containing mystical creatures and other strange things.

To discover the truth, divers of various ranks plunge into it. Riko is such a diver but a low-ranking one. When she finds an amnesiac boy who turns out to be a robot, she names him Reg. She sets out to brave the Abyss with Reg to look for her missing mother.

1) Steins;Gate

A brilliant time travel anime, Steins;Gate follows Rintarou Okabe and his friends at the Future Gadget Laboratory as they invent a way to send text messages to the past.

They each take a turn to send a certain message in the past, looking to change their lives. However, messing with time always comes with a price, as Okabe painfully discovers. The tiny changes in the timeline from each text culminate in a tragedy he never could’ve predicted.

Best Dark Anime on Netflix

5) Future Diary

Future Diary works on a premise of a battle royale among twelve contenders for the position of the next god of time and space. All the contenders are given individual future-predicting powers on their cell phones.

Yukiteru Amane is one of the contenders who suddenly finds himself in this situation. When he is approached by Yuno Gasai, his pretty classmate and another contender, he teams up with her. 

4) Another

When transfer student Kouichi Sakakibara joins Class 3-3 of Yomiyama North Junior High, he’s shocked to find his classmates and teachers behaving as if they don’t see the eye-patch-wearing girl in the class.

The girl is Mei Misaki, whom Kouichi met during his time in the hospital. As Kouichi befriends Mei and tries to understand the reason for everyone’s behavior, students of the class begin to die brutally, one by one.

3) Re: Zero, Starting Life in Another World

Subaru Natsuki’s isekai experience seems pretty normal, with meeting a beautiful girl named Satella and helping a cute little girl, Felt.

But after being killed brutally along with Satella and Felt, Subaru is shocked to discover himself starting the journey all over again.

As he meets the girl once again, now called Emilia, he has a long way of pain and misery waiting for him with his horrifying ability.

2) The Promised Neverland

In one of the greatest first episodes ever, the Promised Neverland reveals that the peaceful and idyllic lives of the orphans at the Grace Field are all an illusion.

The orphanage is actually a livestock firm, and the children are sold to monsters to be eaten. The oldest kids, Emma, Norman, and Ray now must do everything to help the younger kids escape this hell.

1) Death Note

Death Note is not only one of the best dark anime of all time, but it is also among the most popular anime in the world. It revolves around Light Yagami, who finds a Death Note one fateful day.

After learning the rules from Ryuk, the Shinigami the Death Note previously belonged to, Light begins to kill criminals all around the world, dubbed famously as Kira.

Best Dark Anime on Hulu

5) Blood-C

Saya Kisaragi might look like an ordinary schoolgirl, but by night, she’s a fierce monster slayer protecting the village from supernatural monsters as she promised.

However, when a strange dog appears in her life and questions the person she made the promise to, Saya’s reality begins to crumble as the truth about herself comes to the surface.

4) Black Butler

Ciel Phantomhive experiences hell on earth when his parents are killed, and he is kidnapped to be tortured cruelly by the enemies of the Phantomhive house.

Burning with the desire to seek revenge, Ciel makes a deal with a demon from hell in exchange for his soul. Now, the demon poses as Sebastian Michaelis, Ciel’s obedient butler, and bids every order of his young master.

3) Tokyo Ghoul

A disastrous date with Rize Kamishiro caused Ken Kaneki to suffer a brutal accident, which also killed Rize.

As Kaneki wakes up in the hospital, he’s horrified to discover that he was saved with Rize’s ghoul organs, and as a result, he has turned into a human flesh-eating ghoul.

Still grappling with the horrific turn of events, Kaneki finds out that more pain and misery await him.

2) Erased

Satoru Fujinuma is a 29-year-old manga artist detached from everyone around him. When he finds himself back minutes before a tragedy is about to happen, Satoru uses his “Rival” power to save lives.

But after being falsely accused of murdering his mother, Satoru travels back 18 years in the past and realizes that the kidnapping of Kayo Hinazuki is connected to everything in his life.

1) Parasyte: The Maxim

Often considered one of the best dark anime of all time, Parasyte: The Maxim explores a world where a parasitic alien species has invaded Earth. The parasites enter a human through any organ and eventually take over the human brain.

Shinichi Izumi is a meek teenager whose right hand is taken over by a parasite alien. He managed to stop it from reaching his brain, but now has to live with the parasite, naming it Migi.

Best Dark Anime on Funimation

5) Deadman Wonderland

When Ginta Igarashi visits the prison amusement park, Deadman Wonderland, where the inmates perform to amuse the viewers on a school trip, he has no idea what misfortune awaits him.

After his classmates are killed by a man in red, Ginta is framed for the murders and sent to Deadman Wonderland. Now Ginta must survive the twisted and sadistic inmates of the prison.

4) Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou

In June 1983, Keiichi Maebara transferred to a small village called Hinamizawa, where he befriends some girls at his new school.

But soon, he begins to notice some weird behaviors from his friends and the villagers. There is also a stranger who looks at the events unfolding from afar as death and darkness soon spread across the village.

A famous horror anime, Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou, is also one of the best dark anime on Funimation.

3) Fate/Zero

The Fate series has its dark moments, but the darkness of Fate/Zero remains unmatched. With a helplessly hopeless ending, this anime features the Fourth Holy Grail War.

Kiritsugu Emiya, an infamous mercenary, is hellbent on winning the wars, but so are the other participants. But then there’s Kirei Kotomine, a sadistic man who’s only looking to spread the pain.

2) Psycho-Pass

In the 22nd century, Japan adapted the Sybil System, where the mental condition of every citizen is monitored to ascertain the criminal intent of a person.

This criminal tendency is called the Psycho-Pass, and only those whose Psycho-Pass numbers fall within the ordinary margin, are given a chance to live normally within society.

However, rookie Inspector Akane Tsunemori soon discovers what such a society can really bring.

1) Hellsing Ultimate

Hellsing Ultimate is a gory and brutal anime featuring Alucard, a powerful and ruthless vampire who works under Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing in the Hellsing Organization.

Along with Seras Victoria, his new vampire servant, Alucard, goes on a rampage, killing everyone who stands in the way of the organization. Unflinchingly brutal, it is considered among the best dark anime of all time.

Our list of the top 20 best dark anime on Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu & Funimation has come to a conclusion.

We’ve made sure to include every type of dark anime in this list to better cater to your tastes. Check these awesome anime out, and when done with them, visit Otaku’s Notes to sate your other anime-related cravings.

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Anamika Das

Anamika loves words and stories and putting them to pages. She also loves anime, manga, books, movies and everything fantasy. She has been a fan of anime since childhood and her admiration for it only grew with years. Her passion for writing is even more elevated by writing about the things she loves.